


no grave (can hold my body down)

by heartunsettledsoul



Series: Forgotten Moments [16]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Post 2x21, angst fest to end all angst fests, in which the author cried to a hozier song almost the whole time she wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 14:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: But it hurts infinitely more to see him like this, bloodied and broken and so eerily still that the first thing she does when she stumbles forward is reach out for his wrist to check for a pulse. She hits the ground cold before she gets a chance, so overcome with worry and fear and sheer exhaustion that her body merely gives up.Not Jughead, she thinks in the moments before it goes black and she hits the ground. Please not Jughead, too.or, some unbridled angst as we all work through the end of 2x21





	no grave (can hold my body down)

**Author's Note:**

> the author would apologize for any excessive emotions this gives the readers, but she's a little too busy crying into her wine right now.

_When my time comes around_  
_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_  
_No grave can hold my body down_  
_I'll crawl home to her  
_

Hozier, "Work Song" 

.

.

.

There’s so much adrenaline coursing through Betty’s veins that she almost feels sick. So much— _ too much _ —has gone down and her body is paralyzed.   

 

_ I’m happy to hear your voice _ , he said.  _ I’ll never stop loving you,  _ he said.  _ I’ll see you soon,  _ he said. 

 

She hasn’t even had enough time to properly process the fact that her father really is a murderer, really did stalk and torture her, that it’s not just a wild theory her overtired brain concocted. The sound of her mother gasping for air under the angry press of her father’s hands around her throat and the sickening thud of the fire poker against her father’s head chase each other around her mind, but are quickly replaced by the soft echoes of  _ I’ll never stop loving you.  _

 

Somehow Betty thinks she should have known this was coming; maybe it’s because she knows she did the same thing, mere months before, broke his heart to keep her safe, and she can hear the tell-tale tremble in his voice and the underscore of a plea to talk him out of this. She knows it all because that is  _ precisely  _ why she sent Archie in the first place—Jughead knew her too well to not see through a lie. And in the moment that she hears the line go dead, Betty knows that Jughead called her because he wouldn’t be able to lie and hangs up too quickly to let her stop him. 

 

Because it’s Jughead and he’s stubborn and a pioneer for justice and a little melodramatic and  _ that’s why she loves him.  _ And he knew if he paused to explain or to say anymore than an I love you, that she—equally stubborn and on the hunt for justice and firmly entrenched in their town’s drama—would not let him go. 

 

His words haunt her. From the minutes she spends standing on her front steps, watching her father shoved into the back of a crown vic, to her call to FP and the achingly slow ride in the passenger seat of Fred Andrews’ car, to the nauseating silence among the mourning teen Serpents while she and Archie stand there in their bloodied coats that stand out vibrantly against the Serpent leather—it haunts her. 

 

_ I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll see you soon.  _

 

When FP emerges from the fog, body staggering under the dead weight of his son’s limp body, the earth drops out from beneath her. There’s just so much blood and he looks so fragile, the same way he regains some of his childlike innocence in sleep when she likes to run her fingers through his unruly curl and look at the softened, relaxed features of his face. He bears so much responsibility and guilt on his shoulders that Betty often wishes she could take some of it on herself (not that  _ she  _ needs anymore, but it just pains her to see him like that). 

 

But it hurts infinitely more to see him like  _ this,  _ bloodied and broken and so eerily still that the first thing she does when she stumbles forward is reach out for his wrist to check for a pulse. She hits the ground cold before she gets a chance, so overcome with worry and fear and sheer exhaustion that her body merely gives up. 

 

_ Not Jughead,  _ she thinks in the moments before it goes black and she hits the ground.  _ Please not Jughead, too.  _

.

.

.

She comes to, to a hand softly brushing hair out of her face. It’s so reminiscent of the way Jughead likes to fix her hair—after purposely mussing it—when they’re laying in bed together that she almost believes the wild assumption that maybe they’re just under her big fluffy comforter and this was all a bad dream.   

 

The droning  _ beep, beep, beep  _ of her heart monitor brings reality crashing back down to her. 

 

Instead of the rueful smile and signature beanie she’s expecting when she opens her eyes, Betty is greeted by the tear-stained face of Alice who promptly burst into tears upon seeing her daughter wake up. 

 

“God, Betty,” she sobs, hitting the nurse call button with one hand while using the other to drag her into twisted half hug. “You had me so scared.” Betty’s seen her mother at wits’ end several times in the past few weeks, but nothing quite like the way she looks now. And who could blame her—her eldest daughter ran off with her grandchildren, the boy she thought was her long-lost son wasn’t actually, her  _ real  _ son is dead, her husband turned out to be a serial killer, and now her youngest daughter had collapsed and was hospitalized. 

 

The Cooper family was  _ not  _ having a good year. 

 

Betty wants to reassure her mother that it’s okay, she’s  _ fine,  _ they’ll figure it out and be  _ fine,  _ but she remembers in a flash the reason she collapsed in the first place. When she opens her mouth to ask after Jughead, her voice feels raw and crackly.  _ How long has she been out? Long enough for something more to have happened? Long enough for Jug not to have made it?  _

 

Her face must betray the panic because Alice starts to stroke her hair, soothing her like she used to when Betty and Polly were little and couldn’t sleep. “He’s in surgery,” she says and Betty wants to cry in relief to hear a present tense verb used in referral. 

 

(She remembers Toni, gripping Cheryl’s hand, catching herself talking about Fangs in past tense and dissolving into tears while they all waited in the Wyrm parking lot.) 

 

_ I’ll see you soon  _ plays on a loop in her head while Alice tells her that the hospital wants to keep Betty under observation for dehydration and exhaustion, that she already shanghaied a nurse into agreeing that she’ll put Jughead in the room next door, and that at minimum, Jughead has three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and severe lacerations across his face and chest. “There’s also,” Alice breaks off, seemingly to swallow down some bile. “They cut off his tattoo and nearly cut down to the bone.” 

 

Pound of flesh, indeed. 

 

Betty lets the hot tears cascade, finally crying for everything that has come to pass. Chic, her father, Midge, her fractured friendship with Veronica, Jughead. It all hurts too much. She has worked so hard to keep it all under wraps, to only let it break her down little by little, and only showing tiny cracks of vulnerability in brief moments. And now it’s just too much. 

 

She lets out a wail, clinging to her mother who rubs her back in reassurance and tries to find the words to calm a daughter who has been through it all and nearly lost it all. 

 

There aren’t any. 

.

.

.

Archie is a constant presence by her bedside for the 36 hours that Riverdale General insists on keeping her hooked up to an IV. He runs between Betty’s room to the waiting room where FP, in a stoic blind panic, sits stock still, to the front entrance where there’s a tiny amount of cell service for him to reach Veronica, and back again. 

 

Betty is grateful for him, especially when Alice finally needs to leave to give a statement to the new Sheriff and to give a call to the family lawyer to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he cannot represent Hal and that  _ yes, she will testify against her spouse, thank you very much.  _ Archie is there to hand her crossword puzzles that she ignores until he runs back out for a Jughead update, to scroll through all the pictures of Vegas on his cell phone to make her smile, and eventually to sneak a wheelchair from a nurse’s station to wheel her into Jughead’s room when he is released from intensive care. 

 

He looks so small and so un-Jughead-like underneath the harsh fluorescent light and the pale blue hospital-issue gown and blanket. Archie warned her it was bad, but it still hadn’t prepared her for the sight of his bruise-blackened face, the thick rubber breathing tube taped to his mouth, or his extremities covered in stitches and gauze. Just below the sleeve of the gown, she can see a large swath of bandages covering the spot on his bicep where the Serpent tattoo used to be. That more than anything makes Betty tear up, knowing how much it meant to him to prove himself and find a family where he finally felt like he fit in. 

 

She cries even harder upon realizing that his matted hair is especially unruly due to the lack of beanie. Her voice cracks as she asks, “It didn’t get lost, did it?” trying to imagine the look of brokenness in his eyes if Jughead were to wake up without knowing where his beloved hat was. 

 

“Nah,” Archie says softly, wheeling her closer so she can hold Jughead’s hand. “He left it at the Wyrm, Toni brought it over for FP to have while he waited.” 

 

It’s then that Betty finally brings her gaze to the dishevelled man crumpled in a chair on the far end of the room. Knowing bits and pieces of his history from Jughead, Betty is sure that FP has probably looked worse for the wear than he does after three days of bloodshed and chaos, nearly two of which were spent fearing for his son’s life. But the image of the soft gray knit clutched in his hands is enough to show that FP had never felt worse in his entire life. 

 

If only Jughead could see them all now. He spends so much of his time worrying that the people in his life don’t  _ want  _ him there, that he convinces himself they actually don’t. But there’s a hospital waiting room full of people just waiting for him to wake up, trying to love him back into consciousness, and he isn’t even awake to realize how fiercely they all need him. 

.

.

.

Betty didn’t really think it was possible to feel the physical pain of a broken heart; surely, if it were, she would have felt it in the days after sending Archie to Jughead to keep him away or in those following the night Jug left her alone and crying in the parking lot of the White Wyrm, when she was so sure the emotional anguish would tear her apart. 

 

But the way her chest is squeezed in an invisible vice-like grip is beginning to prove her wrong. It feels especially painful when she lets her eyes fall to the blinking monitor, the only sign of life coming from a still-unconscious Jughead. 

 

The heartache comes in the form of nausea every time Betty lets herself think of her father. But not of the most obvious thoughts—Hal kneeling before her and making her list out his crimes, the blood from Cheryl’s archery-inflicted wound slowly seeping through the stark blue of the sweater, the detached voice he used before trying to strangle his wife in front of his daughter. No, it’s all the moments and memories leading up to when things first started going wrong that make Betty double over from the twist in her gut. 

 

Milkshakes at Pop’s after ballet class, ordering the larges for her and Polly even though Alice never let them have that much sugar. Perching on a chair next to his workbench in the garage, waiting patiently until the day he finally said she could get under the hood herself. The laughter in his eyes when she asked,  _ theoretically of course,  _ what it would take to hotwire a car. Weekday afternoons in the Register’s office, when Betty was too young to be home alone and Alice took Polly to piano lessons, and Hal let her spin around in the biggest desk chair while he quizzed her on spelling and let her help place titles on the layout. All the times she and Archie played hide and seek in the backyard and Hal would secretly point to Archie’s hiding spot. 

 

Every single happy memory is tainted. 

 

It isn’t like Betty looked at her childhood through rose-colored glasses. She knew early on that the Cooper family way was to smile so nobody else knew what was going on. Betty still remembers every time Polly held her hand when they could hear their parents screaming at each other from upstairs, the look of disappointment that came all-too-easy to both of their parents when they dared to make even the tiniest misstep, all the mornings Betty quietly crept back upstairs after seeing her dad asleep on the couch. 

 

Her life wasn’t perfect. Her parents were never perfect. But now even the small moments of sunshine she clung to in the darkest family times were gone, completely ruined. 

 

Betty hadn’t relied on those memories much in the time since Jughead came back into her life and irrevocably changed it for the good, choosing instead to focus on the bright moments like  _ Hey there, Juliet  _ or how he cradled her scarred hands in Pop’s or the way Jughead’s fingers trembled when he carried her from the couch to the trailer bedroom the night of Veronica’s confirmation. 

 

But now, curled into an uncomfortable hospital chair, Betty can’t manage to focus on all the beautiful moments she’s shared with Jughead. Not when the source of that happiness is laying in a hospital bed, recovering from wounds that no one has officially confirmed he actually  _ would  _ recover from. 

 

It all feels hopelessly, impossibly dark. 

.

.

.

After her own observation hours are up, Betty refuses to leave the hospital. Alice, Archie, and Veronica all take one look at the determination in her face—despite her trembling lower lip and the crack in her voice—before accepting that there is simply no convincing her. Archie takes the chair next to hers in Jughead’s hospital room and slings an arm around her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. Not wishing to intrude on a deeply familial grief, Veronica gives both Betty and Archie bear hugs and leaves with a promise that she’ll have anything they need or want delivered directly to them. 

 

Alice, to her credit, simply gives in and brings back a small bag of extra clothes, a toothbrush, Betty’s worn stuffed cat from her bed, and a couple of books. When Betty briefly stands to hug her in thanks, Alice twirls the ends of her daughter’s ponytail in her fingers, an action that reminds her acutely of the elementary school days before she could do her own hair. 

 

(Betty takes a moment to cradle her beloved stuffed animal, breathing in the scent of her bedroom deeply, before remembering that everything about her life in that bedroom and that house was a lie. When no one is looking, she uses one faded orange ear to wipe away more tears.)     

 

FP is still a permanent fixture in another chair on the wall opposite where Betty keeps her own watch. If he looked like hell before Betty was released, it’s nothing to how he is now. The several days’ scruff is turning into a fully unkempt beard, his eyes are bloodshot and watery, his hair standing on end from repeatedly running his fingers through it.

 

Alice hands him a cup of coffee and he takes it with a shaking hand. The tremors are noticeably stronger than those of exhaustion and Betty realizes with a jolt that he must be detoxing. 

 

Brusque, businesslike, and distinctly Alice-like, Alice tells him, “You need to get yourself cleaned up, FP.” His response is merely to take a long drag of the coffee before continuing to stare morosely at the foot of Jughead’s hospital bed. The stubbornness of the Jones men is a family trait and Betty would smile if it that stubbornness wasn’t exactly the reason they were in this damn hospital in the first place. 

 

The voice her mother uses next is soft, but nearly unrecognizable in its unique sincerity. Betty almost feels like she’s witnessing something too private to be party to. 

 

“Come on, Junior,” whispers Alice. “You don’t want him to see you like this when he wakes up.” 

 

Betty takes particular notice of the use of  _ when  _ instead of  _ if,  _ and prays to whatever god is running the cruel universe of Riverdale that it truly is a  _ when.  _

 

She tries to ignore the gentle way that her mother guides Jughead’s father into a standing position, rubs his back in a reassuring motion. It takes a few attempts at clearing his throat before FP croaks out, “Sorry about Hal, Ally.” Betty is half-expecting an Alice Cooper signature snort of derision because, truly, how the hell  _ else _ are they supposed to respond. Instead, Betty is surprised to hear a soft noise, nearly a whimper, escape from somewhere deep within her mother. With the hand not holding fast to Jughead’s beanie, FP lightly touches his fingers to the blooming bruises across Alice’s throat and collarbone, an ugly reminder of their now-shattered world. 

 

“He did always suck at follow-through,” FP grunts out. 

 

The strangled laugh seems to startle Alice as much as it does Betty. “There’s that sunshiney humor, Junior. Now come on. Hog-Eye is outside to give you a lift home. You can shower and eat something and come right back. Betty isn’t going anywhere, she’s here for him.” 

 

With a reluctant nod, FP allows himself to be pushed out of the room. He disappears for all of thirty seconds before shuffling back in, placing a hand on Betty’s shoulder where she has pretzeled herself into a crunched fetal position to stare directly at the split on Jughead’s cheek—right where she loves to cup his face in her hand before kissing him—held together with butterfly bandage. 

 

She looks up into FP’s sunken face; he looks like a man unhinged, wild grief in his eyes, and Betty knows her own expression must be the same. “Hang on to it for him,” he says gruffly. In his outstretched hand is the beanie, so much a part of Jughead that it seems wrong to see it as simply an object, without the messy black hair underneath. Betty accepts it wordlessly, holding it to her face and inhaling deeply. It’s faint, but it smells just slightly of Jughead’s sandalwood shampoo, and it makes her heart ache.  

 

Cradling the soft gray material to her chest, Betty falls into a fitful sleep, lulled by the steady beep of her boyfriend’s heartbeat.

.

.

.

At one point between her brief naps—she keeps waking up with a jolt from varying nightmares including her father tried to strangle her mother again, trying to strangle her or Polly or the babies, or visceral images of watching Penny kicking Jughead in the stomach, slicing into his arm, slamming his face into the ground, or Penny coming for her next and Betty not being able to defend herself, mouth opening to scream but nothing coming out—Betty drags the uncomfortable chair over to the bed and laces her fingers through the hand that doesn’t have an IV in it, brushing a stuck lock of hair off his forehead with the hand that still holds his beanie. 

 

Betty knows it’s him, that it’s  _ her  _ Jughead, but it doesn’t feel like him. She doesn’t want to let go of the hat, but places it on the pillow next to his head anyway. It still isn’t quite right, but it’ll do. He looks so fragile that she’s scared to hug him like she wants, or to climb into the bed beside him like she  _ really  _ wants. 

 

She has to settle for holding his hand and resting her head on the stiff mattress, craning her neck at an odd angle to look as his unmoving face. Sometime in the hours that passed, the nurses removed the breathing tube and she takes that as a positive sign. With one less medical device attached to him, he feels closer to the real Jughead,

 

“Our story isn’t over yet,” whispers Betty fiercely. “We are only just beginning.” Tears start to stream down her face, wishing with every fiber of her being that his eyes would just  _ open.  _ “You hear, Jug? This isn’t over. You are not allowed to do this to me. You told me you would see me soon and I need you to keep that promise.  _ I need you.  _ Don’t you leave me alone in this. You said you knew I could handle this all, handle it alongside you. I thought you were done with your one-man-army crusades and I am so, so mad at you for doing it again. You are not allowed to die because you need to wake up so I can yell at you. Because my dad is a murderer and my life is falling apart and you said—,” her voice cuts off, choking on the sobs that she can’t hold back anymore. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me again. So  _ wake up,  _ Jughead. Wake. Up. I love you, please wake up.”           

.

.

.

Betty wakes up once more to a kind, fresh-faced young nurse shaking her shoulder. “Hi, honey,” she says, smiling gently. “You looked uncomfortable, but I also have to change his IV.” 

 

She nods and swallows thickly before moving out of the way. FP has returned, slumped once again in a chair, though he looks to be asleep, and Archie is passed out in a chair behind her. Seeing them both reminds her that she has no idea what time or day it is. Betty doesn’t even know what’s happened to her phone, but a cursory dig through the bag her mother packed helps her locate it and she checks the time. 

 

It’s 1:14am, nearly three days since the night everything in her life imploded. Three days since every happy childhood memory was ripped from her, since the world as she knew it disappeared, and three days since the one good thing she had left, the unconditional love from Jughead, was thrown into jeopardy by his stupid self-sacrifice. 

 

Betty wants so badly to be mad, because she  _ is  _ mad, but worry usurps everything else right now. 

 

While the nurse checks stitches, bandages, varying tubes and drain, Betty hovers on the opposite side of Jughead’s bed and tries to process all the broken, healing parts. There are more of those than anything untouched. It guts her, wishing she could at least see the blue in his eyes or the telltale quirk of his lips when he smirks, even though that expression would bound to be painful in this condition. “There’s not a lot of staff around,” the nurse says conspiratorially, looking at Betty with kindness—and a twinge of pity. “If you wake one of these two up to help, we can make some space in the bed for you.” 

 

“I- ” Betty tries to speak, fisting her hands in the bedsheets so she doesn’t clench her palms. “I don’t want to hurt him, it’s okay.” 

 

“Honey, he’s on enough morphine that even if he were awake he wouldn’t feel a thing. And I get the idea that you’re the first person he’ll want to see when he opens his eyes.” 

 

The sentiment makes tears well up in her eyes again so, wordlessly, she moves over to where Archie is stretched out and jostles him awake. With murmured directions from the nurse, he helps her carefully slide Jughead a few inches over, allowing just enough space for Betty’s tiny frame to sidle in next to him. When the nurse leaves, Archie helps Betty shift around slightly to get comfortable before shrugging out of his hoodie to drape it over her and Jughead. 

 

“Just shout if you need anything,” he says with a squeeze of her hand. “He’ll get there, Betts. He’ll be okay.” 

 

“Thanks, Arch,” she mumbles. 

 

The last thing Betty remembers before falling asleep is the blissful calm settling over her at the solid feel of Jughead’s body next to her. 

.

.

.

“When he wakes up, I’m going to kick his ass for being such an idiot.” 

 

Toni’s voice is one of a cast of whispers coming from one side of the room. Betty lifts her head blearily, squinting against the small strips of sunlight shining through the window blinds, to see Toni, Sweet Pea, and a few other of the teen Serpents huddling around FP. 

 

“I’ll help you,” Betty yawns, trying hard to not bump Jughead when she moves. 

 

“Oh hey, Betty,” smiles Toni. “Who’d you bribe to let you up there?” 

 

“Night nurse.” They share a look of unspoken gratitude toward each other, unwilling to say much more aloud. Toni’s eyes are rimmed red and Betty remembers— _ Fangs.  _ She wouldn’t be surprised if Toni has spent as much of the last few days crying as Betty has. Even Sweet Pea, towering over everybody, looks subdued and ghostly pale, as though all the righteous anger finally drained out of him. 

 

He catches her looking at him and nods in acknowledgement. “Shitty week for you, huh Cooper?” 

 

Understatement of the year. 

 

It’s then that Betty notices them looking at her curiously and she wonders if they’re all thinking what she’s been trying to avoid putting words too: what if the crazy really  _ does  _ run in her family and she’s the next one to fly off the handle in a murderous rage? Suddenly she wishes Archie were still in the room, but he’s nowhere to be seen, likely either with his dad or Veronica. 

 

In lieu of an actual response, Betty meets Sweet Pea’s eye and says quietly, “I’m so sorry about Fangs.” 

 

He releases a heavy sigh. “Yeah, me too, Cooper. Me too.”  

.

.

.

Hours tick by slowly, measured only by the rotating visitors and the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor. One of Jughead’s doctors eventually kicks Betty off the bed, but after he leaves the room, FP helps her to crawl back in.

 

Being this near him helps her feel safe and keeps the turbulent waters of her mind quiet. Betty is afraid that if she moves away from him for too long, she’ll collapse in on herself and never get back up. She grew up feeling like the weight of the world was on her shoulders, which only increased tenfold since Jason Blossom, since the Black Hood—since  _ her father _ , she mentally corrects. Even with him unconscious and battered, the proximity to Jughead lightens the load ever so slightly. 

 

The load feels feather light the following morning when, still half in dreamland, Betty feels Jughead’s hand squeeze back against hers. Her eyes fly open and if she weren’t afraid of knocking them both off the bed, she would have leapt up in surprise, or panic, or relief, or whatever it is she’s feeling now. 

 

Because blinking back at her are the blue eyes she’s been praying would open for days now. One is still mostly swollen shut, the other framed by several rows of stitches, but they’re open. 

 

“ _ Juggie,” _ she breathes incredulously. 

 

He tries to smile but winces at the movement. But still, he powers through to open his mouth and speak, though his voice is scratchy from disuse. “Told you I’d see you soon, Betts.”  

.

.

.

It’s still another two days of heavy medication and constant observation before Riverdale General even  _ thinks  _ about releasing Jughead. He realistically should have stayed for close to another week, but when a timid-looking PA tried to tell Jughead that, he threatened to rip out his own IV and walk out himself if they didn’t let him go home. So two days it was.

 

Now that he’s awake, Betty refuses to sleep. After frantically calling for nurses in the moment after he woke up, Betty stands by his side through every blood test, every bandage change, and every poke and prod that makes him groan in pain. He holds her hand after the first wave of doctors leave and tries to tug her back into the bed. 

 

She blinks in fear. “I don’t want to hurt anything,” she says. 

 

Stubborn as ever, Jughead levels her with his best pouting glare. “Betty Cooper I did not let myself lose a thirty-to-one beatdown so you could keep a three-foot radius from me at all times.” 

 

Betty levels him with a glare of her own. “Yeah, let’s talk about that death wish of yours, Forsythe.” 

 

(She sits on the edge of his bed and they fight in whispers, Jughead going on about trying to make sure everyone he loves was safe and Betty snapping that they’d  _ done this already _ and it wasn’t fair to make a unilateral decision,  _ especially when it means letting a gang beat the shit out of him.  _ Betty wins the argument when she dissolves into tears, sobbing that she thought she was going to lose her family and the love of her life in one fell swoop. 

 

Jughead blinks back tears of his own as Betty clamors back into the bed and clings to his one good arm while she tells him every horrible detail of what happened with Hal. The misery and sadness in her voice makes it clear she is every bit as broken and bruised on the inside as Jughead looks on the outside. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I love you. Always will.” 

 

“Never going to stop,” Betty whispers back.) 

.

.

.

 

An entire entourage takes Jughead home the morning he is released: Archie and Sweet Pea slowly frogmarch him from hospital-issue wheelchair to FP’s truck and from the truck to the trailer door, where Toni had created a throne of pillows on the sagging couch and Betty was baking up a storm both to feed Jughead’s insatiable sweet tooth and to give herself something to do with her hands that was not trying to break the skin of her palms open. 

 

(She doesn’t want to see the flash of concern in Jughead’s eyes again, as it had when he slowly pried her fingers loose the first night he was awake in the hospital and Betty woke up from a nightmare about her father to bloodied hands.)

 

It brings her immense relief to help Jughead fit his beanie back on his head, as he gingerly leans forward for her to stretch the worn knit across his matted hair. He barely looks like himself in the washed out room, covered in bandages, but the signature crown points are one more step closer toward homeostasis and everyone in the room seems happier for it. 

 

It’s as an uproarious occasion as the circumstances allow: Jughead is under strict orders to not over-exert himself and to remain on bedrest for up to two weeks, and even the walk from the truck to the trailer had him winded. But still, Veronica follows through on her promise and brings bags upon bags on Pop’s takeout, Toni unironically pops a bottle of sparkling cider (which FP takes without question and with only one longing glance at the beer in the fridge), and the celebratory group encircles Jughead to talk about as many things that they can without discussing the Ghoulie turf war or Fangs’ death or Hal Cooper’s imprisonment. Which is to say, the conversation well runs dry relatively quickly. 

 

The whole time, Betty hovers on the outskirts of the group, careful to partake just enough to appear alright but not so much that anyone pays her too much mind. Everything feels too precarious and she is terrified that one wrong move could upset the whole tower of cards, that she might wake up from this fever dream into a nightmare she cannot escape—one where Jughead didn’t make it out of the hospital and she and her mother didn’t escape her father.  

 

“Betts,” Jughead calls softly. “You still with me?” She blinks and realizes that the living room is suddenly empty, all the guests long gone. Her inner Cooper is horrified that she didn’t say thanks or goodbye to any of them; her outward, this-is-my-life-now Betty can’t bring herself to care. 

 

“Everything okay?” he asks. It seems so backward that through his bruises and swollen face, Jughead is the one asking after her well-being. 

 

Betty doesn’t have it in her to even force out the white lie. “Not really,” she admits. “But I’ll get there. I’m just glad you’re alright.” Not that a mild concussion and a still partially-collapsed lung and too many stitched up abrasions to count is the definition of  _ alright.  _ But he’s alive and breathing and that’s enough for now. 

 

“C’mere,” he beckons, patting the empty space next to his pile of pillows. Betty is still too nervous to be that close to him, worried that he’ll evaporate if she is too near. Swallowing down a lump the size of a softball, Betty moves from the armchair to the floor next to Jughead’s spot on the couch. 

 

If he’s confused by the action, he says nothing. He lays a hand on her shoulder and she rests her cheek against his warm skin. This is enough, she thinks.

.

.

.

She isn’t totally sure  _ why  _ she’s afraid to touch Jughead, but Betty refuses to address it nonetheless. Instead she makes up for the intimacy in other ways, constantly fetching him blankets or fixing his pillows, checking the gauze on his arm, bringing him food or water or a book or the remotes. 

 

If she keeps moving, she won’t have to stop to think about how  _ different  _ every little thing in her life feels. If she sits down, everything will feel too real it. If she stops, it will defeat her. 

 

And Betty Cooper is not one to be defeated. 

 

Betty does falter, though, when Jughead addresses it directly. 

 

“Betty, do you have a fever or something?” he laughs when she blithely agrees to watching whatever movie he had suggested. 

 

“What? No, I’m fine,” she responds from the opposite side of the room. 

 

“Beg to differ.” The twisted semblance of a grin breaks through the bruises and blood around his bottom lip. “You just agreed to watch all the extended versions of  _ Lord of the Rings _ , so you’re either delirious or not even paying attention.” 

 

(There’s no way to fib her way out of that one. She’d once told him, lovingly of course, that she did not like him  _ nearly  _ enough to watch a four hour movie. Even on pharmacy-grade painkillers, Jughead was still shrewd enough to pick up on the idiosyncrasies in her behavior, and that was a glaringly obvious stumble.) 

 

He’s looking up at her from the couch, confusion and hurt clear in his face. The knife that’s been in her heart since that night she watched FP carry him out of the woods twists even deeper. Jughead is already in enough pain, the last thing Betty wants is to be the cause of anymore anguish for him. 

 

“Please sit down, Betty,” he pleads. Powerless to refuse him, now or ever, Betty perches carefully on the arm of the couch, still keeping a safe distance. He eyes her and huffs, “Oh, _come on_ ,” before grabbing her hand and pulling her toward him. She watches him grimace as he tries for another smirk, “Come nurse me back to health, Betts.” 

 

It’s too close, she’s going to  _ hurt him,  _ he can’t be in any more pain, not because of her. Betty tries to back away, tears welling up in her eyes. They spill over before she can do anything to stop it and then she’s gripping his hand tightly and weeping into a spare pillow. 

 

“I don- I don’t,” she hiccups. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

 

The faint trace of a smirk again. “Hate to break it to you, Betty, but I think 98% of me is hurt right now. But codeine is a magical thing and if you don’t come kiss me right this second, I’m going to have to keep leering at your ass from across the room like a complete fuckboy.” 

 

It’s enough to startle her out of tears and into laughter. 

 

“There we go,” Jughead murmurs, drawing her closer with a bandaged hand on her cheek. His lips are chapped and taste faintly of the blood that had stained them for days but the way Betty’s mouth softens against his feels distinctly like coming home. 

 

All the desperation rumbling through their bones is knocked loose by the kiss and their bodies take over entirely, ignoring the realities of pain and exhaustion. Jughead laces fingers through her ponytail and inhales deeply before elevating to open-mouthed kisses and sweeping his tongue past her lips. It’s all Betty can do not to whimper, but it turns into a moan when one of his thumbs presses against her pulse and then she’s lifting to her knees, kissing back with a force she knows is too much, and suddenly she’s swinging one leg over his to climb into his lap. 

 

She brings boths hands to rest on his shoulders and he hisses in pain just as he bites into the soft skin at the slope of her neck. “Shit, I’m sorry,” she gasps, yanking back to make sure he isn’t bleeding anywhere—she’s pressed directly onto the part of his arm that’s been sliced to the bone. 

 

“Fuck it,” Jughead says sharply. “Just don’t stop.” They crash back into each other, ignoring all the different kinds of hurt radiating between both of them. It is rushed and sloppy but tender and careful all at the same time, neither caring about much aside from getting as close to each other as humanly possible. 

 

If Betty could have crawled directly into Jughead’s heart, burrowing inside until every part of her synced with his steady pulse, she would have. Instead, they work together to pry open drawstrings and bra clasps until Betty is sinking down onto him and Jughead’s split lip is trailing faint red kisses across the skin of her left breast. 

 

They’re being reckless and stupid—no protection, no thought toward the damage being done to Jug’s healing process—but for once, they are acting their age. Jughead’s passionate gasps turn toward wheezing and Betty slows them down, whispers for him to just be still and  _ let her take care of him.  _ And she does, rocking back and forth in his lap, looking reverently into his eyes while he cradles her face. 

 

The need between them is so fractured and raw that Betty brings herself to tears thinking about how utterly _right_ this all feels. When they’re done, Jughead chases the tears with his lips as they fall. 

 

“Promise me you won’t ever leave again,” whispers Betty, the plea echoing through the quiet of the trailer. 

 

“Never,” he swears. 

 

They fall asleep as tangled together as injuries allow, Jughead whispering that they’ll get through all of this together, that they’ll eventually get the happiness they deserve. Betty isn’t quite sure she believes him, but he speaks so tenderly and with such sincerity that she wants __ to believe him anyway. 

 

If there’s future happiness coming for her, Betty will make sure she and Jughead walk into it head-on, hand in hand. There’s simply no other way. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all enjoyed this angsty ride! 
> 
> I poured a lot of heart & soul into, and would greatly appreciate reviews/comments!! 
> 
> find me on tumblr under the same handle


End file.
